


Body of Lore

by Marli_Toled0 (orphan_account)



Series: Only in Beginning Can They Reach an End [1]
Category: Planet of the Apes (2011), Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Movies)
Genre: Communication, Family Dynamics, Father-Child Relationship, Forgiveness, Found Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Lore - Freeform, Responsibility, Sign Language, legacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:41:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25889005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Marli_Toled0
Summary: Caesar feels he has two duties left to his kind: he must see them home, to the land his son found for them, and he must send their lore ahead of him, to endure beyond his lifetime. He has made a very specific choice in the perpetuator of the stories he wants told.
Relationships: Caesar & Maurice, Caesar & Nova, Caesar & the Ape Colony, Nova & Maurice (Planet of the Apes 2011)
Series: Only in Beginning Can They Reach an End [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1910269
Comments: 14
Kudos: 10





	1. Thirsty

**Author's Note:**

> I actually wrote a thing! It’s been a minute. Feels good.
> 
> This has been keeping me company the past few days. There’s something in how communication affects the characters of PotA; it’s intimate and has become significant to me and I would like to somehow illustrate it myself. Let’s see how I do! ;)

Caesar traces each word across his own form. Callused fingertips skating a callused palm whisper to him, whisper to the child who sits much too close. She sits close enough to smell the wound, but she appears oblivious to it. Good, he thinks, and continues signing, over and over and over... until she mimics him. Then, he moves on to the next word. His arms are heavier each lesson. Hers will learn this weight.

To mask the scent of injury from his own kind, he slathers resin from a sticky mountain shrub over his fur. Its miserable stench blends with the musk of travel and horses and the other apes who go unwashed except by dry winds on the leeward side of the mountains. None of them seem to be the wiser, though they look at him often on the trek. Always, they look at him. 

Nova, the girl. Her eyes, burnished slate, huddled beneath the hood of her jacket, mirror his movements. He doesn’t know if she comprehends. Though, Maurice has already taught her much in so very short a time. _Ape_ . _Brave_ . _Nova_ . _Thirsty_.

 _Thirsty_ is special. _Thirsty_ is the ache enveloping his heart. Pleasure-ache-sorrow-wistfulness. Words are too finite for what _Thirsty_ is between them.

Not thirsty now, they sit by a cold spring while the colony rests. _Long_ , he tries. _Long_ . Two crooked fingers draw the word up his stiffening arm. _Long_.

Long journey. Long walk. Long story. Long life— his, too long, maybe. Longer than his own son’s.

Nova’s head tilts. Her little fingers touch her left wrist, as though reading a pulse, then slide up her arm. They catch on bunches in the fabric of her sleeve but eventually push up to her shoulder. _Long_ , her eyes seem to say. That’s his imagination; but, she has answered him all the same.

“Long.” He growl-speaks.

She runs the twin fingers along the length of her arm again.

Caesar nods with satisfaction. Her wobbled smile at his validation reminds him she’s a child. Unconsciously, his eyes find his youngest— his only— son, playing nearby, peskily trying to unplait Lake’s braid. Caesar looks back at Nova; she’s drinking a handful of water— so cold it’s tasteless.

When she’s been sated, she roots her fingers under her opposite armpit and he sees her blue lips shiver. Also, he notices the chafe under her nose where the wind has burned her. Nevertheless, she looks back to him. Always they look to him.

Time for the next word.


	2. Hurt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nova is not an ape. The barriers to relating to her are laid out before Caesar and the colony. The most basic of all social norms— distance— which governs both intimacy and respect— is tested. For Caesar, the test is all the more devastating as he feels the urgency of his own situation bearing on him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This might be an idea I flesh out more in a later work: Nova acclimating to Ape culture. But, for now, I think this is as far as I want to tread. I hope you enjoy!

He’s sleeping when a little blunt heel digs into his side and the remnant of the bolt still embedded there nudges a rib bone. Light brighter than the moon that meets him sears behind his eyelids as he jolts to awareness. Cornelius whimpers; the young one is clamped onto his shoulder, sleeping. Caesar is quick to spin gasps of pain into soothing sounds.

Eventually, the child settles, without opening his eyes. Caesar sighs. He feels Cornelius grip his fur with fingers and toes— the toes drive into his side again so that he writhes and blindly reaches to catch the foot paw. The little ones all over the apes’ camp are restive; he hears them. Responding to a rhythm that courses throughout their colony, in the minds of young and seasoned alike. The staccatoed rapping of intimidation, deprivation, and humiliation echoing in a space of fresh memories.

That he could still the rhythm, summon back the pattern in time of redwood trees, sounds of a thriving civilization, and never again his kind would hear the hateful screaming of men!

But, he can’t. He wonders if it will be in their blood from now on. All he can leave behind is a lullaby. The truth of the apes’ strength. _Apes Together, Strong_.

Shifting so Cornelius’s weight is supported by the crag rock and not his side, Caesar finally releases his clenched jaw. He expels all the air he had taken in to buffer the pain of the shaft in his side and finds that its volume is more than he could have guessed he could hold. In the lassitude of eased affliction, his eyes catch slate eyes reflected in the dark.

Nova, tucked under Maurice’s massive arm, watches him. Caesar feels exposed, conscious of the grunts, the protective hand over the wound, the beginnings of infection he has no medicine to cure. Nova’s pale forehead buckles. He knows the questions written in those shadows of cinched skin.

He shakes his head, then huffs, as though blowing away her concern like chaff into the wind. “Sleep.” He speaks.

Her nickel-sized gaze flits away from his face. Begins to search the stretch of his body that night obscures from her. All the while, Caesar repeats the command in exaltations the apes would know not to challenge. But, she is not an ape. 

She probes to understand his winces and that is as excruciating to him as the heel dug into his ribcage. Caesar puffs out his lips. He gestures for her to turn her attention, to recline again. Stop prying. Just as he is becoming angry at her seeming defiance of his commands, Nova turns her face down, allowing Maurice’s shag to blanket her cheeks. Her eyes, decidedly, closed.

Caesar needs only that before he collapses back into exhausted slumber.

  
  
  


The next day, Caesar builds a fire with the first proper tinder they have found. Across the camp, small flames are coaxed seemingly from bare earth. Rocket and some scouts divy out armloads of branches taken from a lifeless mahogany ahead on the trail. Rocket sets a large pile beside Caesar and lingers long enough to say, _First journey, Blue Eyes found trees. Built fires. Like you._

Caesar doesn’t reply but offers an appreciative glance at his friend. Alone again, he takes a dry branch and breaks it. Blue Eyes. Despite himself, despite the loss that still plagues him after all these weeks, he smiles.

He sees Nova approach and bend, like a flame herself, toward the fire, as he builds it. The kindling snaps in rewarding strains. He glances at her and sees how her flesh saps the warmth from the fire, revitalizing like a plant in sunlight.

In many ways, she is much like the young apes. She has as much endurance and need as the juveniles. Just independent enough to wander around the colony as they travel. Or, to scale the boulders, testing where her twiggy fingers can find purchase. She cannot speak, though, and the juveniles (and adults for that matter) thus far have not put forth the effort to communicate with her. That does not mean she’s not tried; she signs what she knows in an attempt to ignite friendship, or, in the least, friendliness.

_My name Nova. Your name?_

Cornelius will play with her from time to time. (He saw her feed his father, give him a drink while he was in that hateful cage. He calls her “ _different ape”_ to reconcile her in his heart.) Caesar recalls yesterday: Cornelius taking the girl’s hands and embedding them in his fur, asking her to groom him... but, Nova doesn’t understand. Eventually, Cornelius chitters in frustration and runs to Lake. He tattles on Nova for being unfriendly, as he perceives it.

Lake is good to them both. She brings Cornelius close to Nova again, then she climbs behind the girl, cooing. Nova folds in her shoulders; she’s aware that she has a role whatever ritual is unfolding, but is unsure what she is meant to do. Lake draws off Nova’s hood and softly pets her stringy hair. The girl responds to the touch with a half-lidded expression. A primal, necessary pleasure shows there. A need is met.

Watching, Cornelius huffs, mouth round with fascination, at the strands of fine gold. _Long_ , he signs. Lake agreeds with a sound, combing fingers down Nova’s neck. Cornelius signs again, _Long-long!_

Light leaps to Nova’s eyes. She looks between Cornelius and Lake. She shows them her arm then runs the word up to her shoulder. _Long_ , she says.

Lake chitters and Cornelius pulls excitedly at Nova’s jacket. Hope is alive in the scene— all three snatch at it; it is skittish as embers rising up and away. Nova looks to him with a grin, oh, so very audacious in its self-gratification. Caesar blows a breath from his nose and smiles at her.

Grooming continues. Encouraged, Cornelius begins smoothing down Nova’s stocking, her skirt, and knit sweater. Nova is more aware with the added sensation. Lake says, _Pretty_ , and kneads the girl’s scalp.

The hope no longer illuminates Nova’s face. She doesn’t understand. That is not a sign that Caesar had taught her.

  
  
  


Caesar winces at the memory. He thinks, Should I have? But I am not the only one who is teaching her to speak to us. Maurice did not teach her _pretty_ either. And what use is it?

The fire is supplied for now. Caesar shifts his weight, thoughtlessly grimacing when the inflamed skin hidden beneath his arm tears open again. The wound is not closing. Snickers from the flames answer his sucked breath.

Nova is in his sight, then. She’s crawled nearly to his lap. Caesar regards her curiously as though he does not have the faculty to comprehend her or what she wants.

Her mouth is agape; a mute inquiry thrums there. The same notches are back on her brow that betray her fright for him, for his life. As though saying “You’re leaving,” and, “please stay!” Her slate eyes fall to his side and climb back to his own.

Caesar instructs his body to compose at last. This is not a pain for young ones to worry over; it’s not pain for anyone but himself. Or, a human, with their medicines and practices to heal. But, to ache for that is wasted energy. He has a job to do: survive until they are home.

A quick, anxious movement catches his gaze. Nova taps the ends of her index fingers together. _Hurt_.

Oh, child, he thinks. With a large hand, he gently swipes her hands to her knees. “I’m,” he rasps, “fine.” In his heart, he feels her kindness blaze like a coal. Perhaps it cauterizes the wounds there, but, all he’s certain of is that, damn, does it burn!

She persists. _Hurt_ . She signs. _You. Hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt_ … her fingertips knock together again and again.

The rhythm of suffering. The rhythm that enslaves his kind. No, this is not what he wants to hear— not from her— from anyone? No!

Caesar stands to his full height. He postulates. _Enough!_ He flings the command down at her. A curled fist to his throat. A sign he remembers once throwing to his son, Blue Eyes, so many years ago. He did not want to hear his son then. Did not want to explain himself, either.

Around them, apes take notice. They hunch in proper deference to his authority. Lowly, they chatter in anticipation. Maurice lops forward a couple slow paces. His expression is unclear through Caesar’s periphery.

However, the girl herself stares up with no humble posturing. She doesn’t bow her head or raise her palm in supplication. Instead, her eyes well with confusion — so innocent, so innocent— stark and blameless enough to send a shiver of shame through him.

With knitted eyebrows and after several fumbling blinks, she mirrors his sign. A “C” hovers over her clavicle. _Enough_.


	3. Future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Home. Family. Future.
> 
> Hope, for all three, is there in the little girl who seems all too tender and exposed for the life of an ape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh! I felt much more in my element with this one. I hope it’s been an enjoyable experience for all. :)

She waits for the next word, eyes on him unrepentantly.

Caesar feels the tension swell beyond the confines of merely him and this child. The entire colony is set to condemn her alongside him, though they’ve no idea what her transgression is. He is no longer sure.

The stoked ire of the moment before is left without fuel. As the ashes of anger cool, he regrets his rebuke. Yet, he cannot redirect the unrest teeming around them; he performed this act to humble her, to draw a distinction, and now they look at him, as they have for decades, and see he’s risen over her. If he does not absolve her, if she does not abase herself, the other apes will certainly reject her.

Nova doesn’t know what is happening. She is the only one of the scores of them in the alpenglow who does not comprehend her situation. (Well, perhaps, that’s not so; he can hear Bad Ape among the throng, whimpering questions.) Caesar frowns. He will have to teach her to apologize.

It’s the only resolution that the apes will accept. Even if he dismisses this, if he just sits down and forces normality to resume, it would only stir up hurt, because she is human. After all, the figures that stood over them with rifles, the ones that drove them to labor without food, the ones that hurled obscenities like sling stones— they were human. How long, he wonders, will she be the embodiment of her kind?

He sniffs, contemplating the least antagonist way to guide Nova into a stance of repentance without upsetting the balance of authority and grace as the ape way dictates.

This is a lesson which, done this way, so publicly, feels like a betrayal to her. How long has he been a father? This is a lesson taught like teaching the phases of the moon: through observations, and over time. This is a lesson taught quietly— he  _ knows _ that. He should not have made such a spectacle in his pride!

His strong arm takes the fabric at her shoulder and he feels how malleable Nova is in her trust of him. Caesar tries to negotiate her forward, to position her frame without seeming the technician. But— a flash of light on slate! —Her brow breaks; she is afraid. He nearly stumbles back.

Maurice is there, then. He drapes an arm over her and she is effectively hidden in a curtain of fur. He inclines his head, offering kiss-squeaks of humility. Caesar stares down helplessly before poorly masking his confliction. Maurice raises his own palm in supplication; Caesar hastily touches it and his friend meets his gaze, passively, wondering, but not challenging him.

Heaving his cumbersome body, Maurice sweeps up the girl. He shuffles them away, holding her to his chest. Through the mats of auburn fur, Caesar glimpses Nova’s eyes; she’s scowling. He doesn’t blame her.

The colony eases; order is restored. Balance, it may not be, but there is at least a release of tension. Caesar sits for the length of a breath, then, when the attention is distributed back to the mundane tasks of subsistence, he retreats to a secluded place, behind an outcrop of deeply jointed rock.

  
  
  


The dead mahogany genuflects in the light aborning. Rocket and his scouts broke many of its arms for kindling. What’s left are thick necks of brittle flesh. Caesar considers them from his perch behind the outcrop. Limbs without offspring.

Maurice’s girth is detectable even before his friend drops beside him. Without looking, Caesar sighs and steels himself. He is not annoyed, nor does he blame Maurice for seeking an explanation for his behavior. Caesar says, “Speak, friend.”

With a few unhurried grunts, Maurice indicates the area beyond the fault-ridden rock where Caesar has withdrawn. He knows whom Maurice means.  _ She is not ape _ .

Caesar scoffs. He nods as if helpless to argue. He’s slightly amused at how similar Maurice’s words look to the affectionate name Cornelius signs for Nova.  _ Not ape. Different ape _ . Is there room there, between the two? Room enough for a little girl to be wedged?

Gentle with his nearness, Maurice asks:  _ Why are you troubled over her? _

Why indeed? Caesar thinks. Since the day she tiptoed on snow-sodden earth— tiptoed as though worried to step in the blood— to the body of a man, flung to the ground by Caesar’s bullet… yes, he has been troubled over her. Even after he ate from her hands and drank the bucket of water she held to his lips. Cornelius, in innocence, however marred by their captivity, can somehow reconcile her in his heart as part of the colony—  _ different ape _ — but Caesar cannot.

He draws his words carefully, like a bowstring laden with a shaft. He doesn't mean for them to be like the bolt in his side, but they come out just as sharp-tipped. “She,” he says, “must learn.” Then, he lets his hands speak a more comfortable and intimate language.  _ She is with us; must act like ape _ .

Maurice grunts again, softly. _ I know _ , he says. However, his head is turned, his flanges off-kilter, inquisitive. Caesar has leaned on Maurice’s curiosity and its harvest for many years. He softens into a smile, allowing his friend to express what’s on his mind.

Big hands, no less tender for their power, sign:  _ But, we are more than ape now _ .  _ She’s with us. _

“What future can she have with us?” Caesar asks genuinely. The wind sobs around them, sudden, but somehow time-worn. Caesar is worn… weakening. Maurice gazes at him as though understanding as much.

However, Maurice relieves his scrutiny. For this moment, they sit quietly. The sun bleaches the sky, the conflagration of dawn color, expunged. The land extends before them, miles and miles, but even so, Caesar cannot see exactly where they will tread.

  
  
  


The aridity climbs as the earth levels under their feet. The see-saw movements of his horse’s haunches, sewing the bolt further in, begin to hypnotize Caesar with pain. Fever slicks his fur; he drinks more water than Cornelius. Once, he unwittingly drains the canteen they share before his son has a chance to drink at all.

Caesar stares at the canteen— it was taken from beneath the avalanche, from stiffened fingers that ran purple in death. On his shoulder, Cornelius hoots, signs:  _ Father _ ,  _ thirsty. Thirsty _ . He raises a hand to call the colony to halt. He will try digging for a spring. But, he notices Nova, on the adjacent horse, talking with her hands to Cornelius.

_ Want? _ She signs then raises a similar canteen from around her chest. It dangles between their horses. Maurice, steering the horse, sees and walks the animal closer.

Nova doesn’t look at him as Caesar takes the strap from her outstretched arm. His fervid fingertips brush her cool, soft ones. When at last her eyes rise to him, she looks with unasking intimacy.

  
  
  


Another day’s walk, perhaps two, Rocket says. Then, they will be home. The apes reignite with determination at the news. They curl into groups, grooming, eating, talking with one another, convinced that tomorrow this exodus will end. They, Caesar’s family, his kind, will be free— they will build and thrive, unabated by humankind.

And, Caesar thinks, Nova will be with them.

Not far from where Caesar is rubbing down his horse, Maurice sits with Nova, drawing letters in the rough dirt with a blackbrush branch. Maurice smiles at her attempts to copy the writing. Nova, any self-consciousness melted away by Maurice’s kindness, bites at a proud grin.

Maurice abandons the blackbrush branch and hefts himself to his knuckles.  _ Dinner _ , he says before lumbering away. Nova continues moving her own branch across the ropy dirt. Her arm and the utensil she holds slide in a fusion with her mind. Whatever she produces on the ground must please her, because she smiles.

Caesar steps up gingerly and settles close to her. His fever-rimmed eyes are nearly ready to close. He keeps them open.

The girl stands, weight on a toe, ready to push, to skate back across the dust. She keeps still. Slate, clear and sharp, reflects him.

He sighs. Then, gesturing:  _ Come here _ . And, to his relieved amazement, she does. It’s not obedience, or resignation, but something else that Caesar can feel within her. For all the fear it stirs in him, he can name it “hope.”

Not for the first time, he wonders about the man, shot, blood thawing the sod beneath him. From as good as a lifetime ago. He wonders over her blank expression, looking at the corpse. Juxtapose that with her earnest weeping over Luca, who had merely given her a blossom to wear behind her ear. So much grief over a palmful of affection? So little for her apparent caregiver?

It scares Caesar in the tender place within all fathers— not so different than flesh ripped apart in his side.

He huffs in slow tempo, feeling winded, but also... burdened. “I’m sorry.” He says.  _ You _ , he signs,  _ are good _ . She smiles and it’s too raw, too powerful to take. So, he lowers his gaze. Drawing a circle on his chest with his fist, he teaches a new word.  _ Sorry _ .  _ Sorry _ .  _ Sorry _ .

Nova mimics, quickly, and Caesar realizes he is caught in a loop. He lets his fist relax, but continues to sign. He does not want to give in to the ache or weight, not until he shares the entire narrative. Just one more night. There, Nova sits before him, face bright as a lamp.


End file.
